musings of a print junkie

Reading Now

Recently acquired...

new and noteworthy

April 16, 2012

My case of The History of Love by Nicole Krauss was all ready for me at my public library today. For distribution on World Book Night. As I said before, I couldn't be happier about the book assigned to me. So singing in the car, singing up the steps to the house and then there were two more bookish gifts for me - a finished copy of the new John Irving due out in May and the new Bolano translation. So sweet a day.

October 23, 2010

My copy of the new Persephone Biannually has not arrived yet, but I have a reason to look forward to it more than usual this time. Claire of Paperback Reader tweeted me the news this week that part of my review of Cheerful Weather for the Wedding by Julia Strachey was included in the reader comments section. A small thing but a happy moment none the less. And such a smart marketing tool for Persephone I realized after my moment of celebration faded a little. Because now I feel especially motivated to return to those unread Persephone titles I own, and to write something better than the quoted post this time around. It takes so much to sustain an independent effort like Persephone, and I love the fact that they have successfully built such a cosy and effective culture around their products.

June 18, 2010

THE FOLLOWING DAY, NO ONE DIED. THIS FACT, BEING ABSOLUTELY contrary to life’s rules, provoked enormous and, in the circumstances, perfectly justifiable anxiety in people’s minds, for we have only to consider that in the entire forty volumes of universal history there is no mention, not even one exemplary case, of such a phenomenon ever having occurred, for a whole day to go by, with its generous allowance of twenty-four hours, diurnal and nocturnal, matutinal and vespertine, without one death from an illness, a fatal fall, or a successful suicide, not one, not a single one. Not even from a car accident, so frequent on festive occasions, when blithe irresponsibility and an excess of alcohol jockey for position on the roads to decide who will reach death first. New year’s eve had failed to leave behind it the usual calamitous trail of fatalities, as if old Atropos with her great bared teeth had decided to put aside her shears for a day. There was, however, no shortage of blood. Bewildered, confused, distraught, struggling to control their feelings of nausea, the firemen extracted from the mangled remains wretched human bodies that, according to the mathematical logic of the collisions, should have been well and truly dead, but which, despite the seriousness of the injuries and lesions suffered, remained alive and were carried off to hospital, accompanied by the shrill sound of the ambulance sirens. None of these people would die along the way and all would disprove the most pessimistic of medical prognoses, There’s nothing to be done for the poor man, it’s not even worth operating, a complete waste of time, said the surgeon to the nurse as she was adjusting his mask. And the day before, there would probably have been no salvation for this particular patient, but one thing was clear, today, the victim refused to die. And what was happening here was happening throughout the country. Up until the very dot of midnight on the last day of the year there were people who died in full compliance with the rules, both those relating to the nub of the matter, i.e. the termination of life, and those relating to the many ways in which the aforementioned nub, with varying degrees of pomp and solemnity, chooses to mark the fatal moment. One particularly interesting case, interesting because of the person involved, was that of the very ancient and venerable queen mother. At one minute to midnight on the thirty-first of December, no one would have been so ingenuous as to bet a spent match on the life of the royal lady. With all hope lost, with the doctors helpless in the face of the implacable medical evidence, the royal family, hierarchically arranged around the bed, waited with resignation for the matriarch’s last breath, perhaps a few words, a final edifying comment regarding the moral education of the beloved princes, her grandsons, perhaps a beautiful, well-turned phrase addressed to the ever ungrateful memory of future subjects. And then, as if time had stopped, nothing happened. The queen mother neither improved nor deteriorated, she remained there in suspension, her frail body hovering on the very edge of life, threatening at any moment to tip over onto the other side, yet bound to this side by a tenuous thread to which, out of some strange caprice, death, because it could only have been death, continued to keep hold. We had passed over to the next day, and on that day, as we said at the beginning of this tale, no one would die.

June 01, 2010

From my inbox today. Like the idea and execution of the forum. Will help me decide which Persephones to read next too. And don't stop reading the letter below too quickly. The offer at the bottom is an excellent one.

1st June 2010

Dear Persephone Reader,

The Persephone Forum has just gone live. There is a page about the first book under discussion, which is William - an Englishman and it should be easy for you to leave comments. Please think of doing so!

On another subject: you may not realise but a huge proportion of books are returned by bookshops and then pulped because the cost of having them sent back to the publisher and cleaned up is far greater than printing new copies.

We could not go along with this because it so environmentally unfriendly, and asked for a thousand unsold Classics to be returned to Lamb's Conduit Street. This cost £500! Which makes the point that it is almost as cheap simply to throw away and reprint.

Sadly, most of the Classics are very slightly damaged: they either have a small mark or the remains of a bookshop sticker.

Since we cannot sell these either to our mail order customers or in the shop we have decided to give them away. So -- if you order one grey book at the normal price we will send you a free Classic. PLEASE DO NOT PAY FOR IT. Simply pay for your grey book as normal and write in the Additional Information box - free Miss Pettigrew Classic please, or something similar. (Nb. overseas books will be sent surface mail. And the offer only applies to one book.)

April 12, 2010

My phone is telling me about breaking news from The Washington Post. 2010 Pulitzer Prizes announced. Predictably, I go right for the fiction category. Tinkers by Paul Harding. Big wtf moment. I have obviously fallen completely out of touch. Never heard of this book but it does look promising. Published by Bellevue Literary Press which I also know nothing about.

Also nominated as finalists in this category were "Love in Infant Monkeys," by Lydia Millet (Soft Skull Press), an imaginative collection of linked stories, often describing a memorable encounter between a famous person and an animal, underscoring the human folly of longing for significance while chasing trifles; and “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders,” by Daniyal Mueenuddin (W.W. Norton & Company), a collection of beautifully crafted stories that exposes the Western reader to the hopes, dreams and dramas of an array of characters in feudal Pakistan, resulting in both an aesthetic and cultural achievement.

Or not. I typically do not rush to read prize winners, but this year might be the exception. Flamboozled. Must see why.

March 11, 2010

Always amused at those "Trending" lists featured on various internet search engines. Really? This is what everyone is searching? So where do I find trending lists more suitable for a print junkie, a word geek? Google Reader. And what has my aggregator been screaming for three days? David Foster Wallace. Because the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin has acquired his archive.

"The archive contains manuscript materials for Wallace's books, stories and essays; research materials; Wallace's college and graduate school writings; juvenilia, including poems, stories and letters; teaching materials and books.

Highlights include handwritten notes and drafts of his critically acclaimed "Infinite Jest," the earliest appearance of his signature "David Foster Wallace" on "Viking Poem," written when he was six or seven years old, a copy of his dictionary with words circled throughout and his heavily annotated books by Don DeLillo, Cormac McCarthy, John Updike and more than 40 other authors.

Materials for Wallace's posthumous novel "The Pale King" are included in the archive but will remain with Little, Brown and Company until the book's publication, scheduled for April 2011."

Many are noting that for an author believed by many to fly by the seat of his pants, Wallace had very detailed notes and revisions of his major works. Some have observed that the personal annotations in his books reflect both his genius and his lack of restraint, discipline. The former observations interest me but the latter do not. What I see is something very touching, very inspiring. Intriguing. That mind. Tell me, do your text annotations look anything like these? This is a person completely wrapped and tied in his love of words. Fascinating to see the reader behind the writer.

March 09, 2010

Simon at Savidge Reads and Eva at A Striped Armchair both had thoughtful posts today about "How We Read." Posts that made me think of my own reading life. And there is one absolute about how and what I read. I occasionally need a reading palate cleanser. And I almost always pick a mystery. A habit from childhood. And a great source of personal glee.

Many have heard me gush about one of my favorites of late, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Well today, the much anticipated sequel comes out, The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag. Which I will devour sometime in the next few days. Devour. Because Flavia de Luce is the most devilishly clever eleven year. And she gave her bike a name. Gladys. She has her own chemistry lab. Country house in England circa 1950. Wicked. Addictive. So, so glad this is a series. More here.

February 03, 2010

Love this story from The Guardian this week. Apparently when the Booker rules changed in 1971, many worthy novels published in 1970 became ineligible for the prize. But the organization is ready to make this right. The longlist of lost novels has been published (see below), the shortlist will be announced in March and then (here is the really exciting part) the public will decide the winner to be awarded in May by voting on the Man Booker website.

How many of these do you know? Do you have a favorite? I have to admit to not knowing a few, and then a few more came to me like a jolt of electricity to the memory. And then there was that moment when I realized that The Driver's Seat is a Muriel Spark novel and not just an Elizabeth Taylor movie. Holy backlist! Feel like I have been caught reading in the moment again.

So here is the longlist:

Brian Aldiss, The Hand Reared Boy

HE Bates, A Little Of What You Fancy?

Nina Bawden, The Birds On The Trees

Melvyn Bragg, A Place In England

Christy Brown, Down All The Days

Len Deighton, Bomber

JG Farrell, Troubles

Elaine Feinstein, The Circle

Shirley Hazzard, The Bay Of Noon

Reginald Hill, A Clubbable Woman

Susan Hill, I'm The King Of The Castle

Francis King, A Domestic Animal

Margaret Laurence, The Fire Dwellers

David Lodge, Out Of The Shelter

Iris Murdoch, A Fairly Honourable Defeat

Shiva Naipaul, Fireflies

Patrick O'Brian, Master and Commander

Joe Orton, Head To Toe

Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven

Ruth Rendell, A Guilty Thing Surprised

Muriel Spark, The Driver's Seat

Patrick White, The Vivisector

So aside from Simon who I expect to hear from in the midst of another Susan Hill moment, which six would you shortlist? And who should walk away with the long-awaited prize?

July 15, 2009

"Last night at midnight, Quirk Books announced a followup to its surprise hit “Pride & Prejudice and Zombies.” The name? “Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters,” of course. The novel will go on sale Sept. 15 and is written by Ben H. Winters (”P&P&Z” author Seth Grahame Smith is currently at work on “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter” for Grand Central). Quirk editor (and franchise creator) Jason Rekulak tells EW that he “just thought it would be really funny to desecrate a classic work of literature” and that he wanted to differentiate his books from the ”one-millionth vampire novel that’s going to be published this year.” In lieu of zombies, Winters promises readers will be introduced to a giant rampaging mutant lobster, octopi with glittering tentacles, and lots and lots of pirates.

"We spend most of our time at work, but what we do there rarely gets discussed in the sort of lyrical and descriptive prose our efforts surely deserve. Determined to correct this lapse, armed with a poetic perspective and his trademark philosophical sharpness, Alain de Botton heads out into the world of offices and factories, ready to take in the beauty, interest, and sheer strangeness of the modern workplace." (from the publisher)